How does wind power work?
11 August 2022
How does wind power work? Wind power is a renewable energy source where electricity is extracted from the energy in the wind.
Wind power is a renewable energy source where electricity is extracted from the energy in the wind. This is done technically by using large propellers that make the wind turbine rotate when the wind blows. This in turn causes a shaft to spin, which creates electricity via a generator in the wind turbine.
So how does wind power work? As is well known, electricity cannot be stored but needs to be used immediately. This means that the electricity that is produced when it is windy needs to be used immediately and the electricity that cannot be produced when there is no wind needs to be produced elsewhere. This is solved by working with the total electrical system. It also includes hydropower, nuclear power and other energy sources.
Hydropower is an example of an energy source that can be easily regulated against wind power. When it's a bit windy, you can simply release more water and vice versa. Hope you got an answer to the question: How does wind power work?
How to avoid unnecessary power peaks in industry?
Where can wind power be built?
Wind turbines are advantageously built at higher altitudes and along coastlines. On the coast, it is extra advantageous because of the access to sea breezes, and the fact that the wind direction is often the same. There also needs to be roads that connect to the wind turbine, partly for transport prior to assembly, but also to be able to arrive and carry out maintenance.
An investment in a wind turbine is a safe investment. You know that the wind will remain forever and it is easy to calculate the payback period of such an investment. An interesting note is that the energy used to produce a wind turbine can be produced by the wind turbine in just a few months. Have you heard of Industry 4.0? Here we explain the concept.
How does wind power affect the environment?
As an energy source, wind power is very environmentally friendly. The most common argument put forward when there is resistance to building a wind turbine is that it is not aesthetically a beautiful feature of nature. A wind turbine also emits a certain, albeit small, sound when the propeller spins in the wind.
There have been a number of cases where birds have flown into the rotor blades of wind turbines, but there have been so few cases that researchers today do not see it as a major problem.
Benefits
The advantages of wind power are many. Since they began to develop in the 70s, a lot has happened. The wind turbines have become larger and, above all, the capacity that the wind turbines can produce has increased considerably, from approx. 75 kW to almost 9 MW. Wind power has now become one of the major renewable energy sources.
Wind power is a good complement to solar energy. When the sun is not shining, it is usually more windy and when the wind is calm, the solar power can take over. Wind turbines are robust structures that stand for a long time. This means that the environmental impact when it comes to the production of a wind turbine is also relatively small.
drawbacks
Wind power still has a lot of development potential. With more efficient generators and finely honed propellers, it will be possible to extract even more energy from wind power without having to build larger ones. Wind power is still quite a large structure in terms of the electricity it can produce.
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